Originally published on 03/20/1966
The major impression we have gained through the games of the NCAA playoffs thus far - before Saturday night's final contest - is that basketball around the East has gone soft.
Watching Don Haskins coached teams for five year, and high school teams through the Southwest for 20 years, we have had a clear impression of the game of bounce-bounce. Then to suddenly find the Miners being branded as "muscular" and "rough" is a bit concerting to say the least.
It is particularly disconcerting to encounter this after having watched the Miners and many of the high school youngsters pick themselves off the floor and scramble back into play.
It has been drilled into us for years that basketball as a "no-contact" sport is just a euphuism.
But so help us Hannah, this is the case.
The wire services reports, some written by people we know are from New Mexico, label the Miners as muscular and rough. One lead, written after the semi-final game with Utah, was so one-sided that we wonder the game was allowed to be played.
Mind you, we are not Utah haters. We thoroughly appreciate the ability in both football and basketball of these folks from Salt Lake City.
(For the benefit of the TV commentators Texas Western is in El Paso).
But Utah won its way to the NCAA final tournament just as did Kentucky, Texas Western and Duke. That they did it despite loss of a player or so is to their credit. But the team that beat good teams on the West Coast is the team the Miners played Friday night.
So why does Associated Press move a story like this lead?
"The Miners from El Paso simply muscled their way past crippled Utah 85-78 despite a 38-point performance by the Utes' Jerry Chambers in the rough, raged wind up"
What were the Miners supposed to do? Take their muscles off and not use any talent they had when laying for a championship?
We received several telephone calls after Friday night's game protesting what the callers termed the poor officiating. (They actually used other terms than "poor" but we have to watch our language.)
There were several questions, in our own mind about it, but we dislike forming opinions like that when what we can see is limited to what another person permits us to view - in this case a TV cameraman who may never have seen a basketball game before.
Comments from both Jack Gardner of Utah and Don Haskins indicate that the game was called much more closely than had been expected. It was not one-sided, so the comments indicated, but just o close for good basketball.
Gardner predicted Kentucky would best the miners on better balance, and from experience in these major tournaments. Haskins called for a great defensive effort by the Miners to be run off the curt.
Regardless of whether the Miners won or lost, which is history as this is read, it was the greatest showing a Texas Western athletic team has ever made, and so far as we are concerned, they will never receive enough credit.
Unheralded except for acceptance as a strong independent team at the outset of the season, neither the Miners nor their fans dreamed of this wind-up to the season. Haskins knew he had a fine team and the players knew they were good. But no one knew just how good.
They met Iowa at the door and smashed them, thereby drawing first national attention, following as it did their victory in the tournament at Rock Island.
A couple of weeks later, when TWC and Kentucky emerged as the only unbeaten major teams there was some thought of a game - but in a casual aside Baron Rupp pointed out it would cost TWC a lot of money. He meant it would take a big guarantee to get the Wildcats to play in El Paso.
Even Baron Rupp, who is pretty cagy in the cage world did not consider the possibility of Saturday night's meeting. How could he? How could any sane, reasoning person? How could even Don Haskins, who opined his Miners, "could stay on the floor with old Kentucky?"
But there it was Saturday night. The Miners got there the hard way, by playing each minute of each game as it came along, by ignoring the score or the deficit and by plugging along, playing basketball as Haskins taught it and as they knew so well how to play it. They did not crack, they made he other team crack instead, as they took the tough ones in stride to get their shot at the national title.
There is no greater honor in basketball than to have played the best thee is and played well.
So get your orange caps and your pennants and come on out to International Airport Sunday morning. This planeload of people id more good for El Paso, spreading the word of the sunshine of the Southwest, than all the advertising budgets. And they did it the hard way.
You saw them on television as they played their way to the top. Come on out to see them in person and let them know el Paso like what it saw and appreciates it.
Let's make it the biggest crowd ever. Who were LBJ and JFK? These are the Miners of Texas Western. They are Our Team.

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